NJR awards Quality Data Provider status to 85 hospitals

Qualifying hospitals demonstrate commitment to patient safety by meeting six ambitious targets set by the registry during 2016/17 financial year

The National Joint Registry for England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man (NJR) has this week awarded 85 hospitals as NJR Quality Data Providers for 2016/17 after successfully completing a national program of local data audits and meeting a number of targets related to patient safety.

Renewable annually, the certification is designed to offer hospitals reporting to the NJR a blueprint for reaching patient safety standards through NJR compliance and reward those who have met such targets. The award benefits hospitals and the NJR by helping recognize and reward best practice; increase engagement and awareness of the importance in quality data collection; and help embed the ethos that better data ultimately equals better care.

The NJR collects data from both NHS hospitals and independent sector hospitals performing joint replacement surgery. Across the 85 hospitals awarded as Quality Data Providers for 2016/17, 49 were NHS hospitals and 36 were hospitals in the independent healthcare sector.

Data is collected in order to provide quality, robust evidence to support decision-making in regard to patient safety, standards in quality of care and overall cost-effectiveness in joint replacement surgery. It is currently the largest registry of its kind in the world.

To gain Quality Data Provider (QPD) status for 2016/17, hospitals were required to meet six ambitious targets. NJR targets included compliance with the NJR’s mandatory national audit aimed at assessing data completeness and quality within the registry, having a high level of patients consenting for their details to be included in the registry, and for demonstrating timely responses to any alerts issued by the NJR in relation to patient safety concerns, if necessary.

The NJR was established in 2002, it monitors the performance of implants, the effectiveness of different types of joint replacement surgery and provides evidence to improve clinical standards — all with a focus on patient outcomes. The NJR’s most recent Annual Report highlighted that more joint replacements than ever before were carried out in the financial year 2016/17, with just fewer than 243,000 cases submitted to the registry. This sees a significant increase of more than 20,000 joint replacement operations recorded in the registry on the previous period.

National Joint Registry medical director, Mr Martyn Porter, said:

Congratulations to colleagues at all hospitals who have gained this unique award. The Quality Data Provider award demonstrates the high standards being met towards ensuring compliance with the NJR and is often a strong reflection of a departmental effort to achieve such status.

Patient registries serve an invaluable function to help make the NHS the safest healthcare system in the world. Registry data now provides an important source of evidence for regulators, such as the Care Quality Commission, to inform their judgments about services, as well as being a fundamental driver to inform improved quality of care for patients.

It is clear that for surgeons and patients alike, the necessity for having accurate and complete data is an absolute requirement. The Quality Data Provider award continues to go from strength to strength and highlights the number of hospitals who are now fully engaged with the NJR’s data completeness program.